How to Set Up Your First Cold Email Campaign in Instantly
How-to — — by Mahmoud Zalt
Build an Instantly campaign end to end: add leads, write the sequence, map variables, set the schedule and daily limit, then launch cleanly.
A campaign in Instantly is four things stacked together: a list of people, a sequence of emails, a schedule that decides when they go out, and a set of options that decides who gets skipped. Get any one of those wrong and the campaign either sends nothing or sends the wrong thing to the wrong people.
This walkthrough goes through all four in the order the builder presents them, then covers the settings that matter most and the reasons a freshly launched campaign sits there doing nothing. It assumes your inboxes are already connected and warmed.
Before you touch the builder, know what you are going to say. Instantly's own cold email strategy documentation recommends a three-step sequence: an initial cold email, a short follow-up bump, and a break-up email. Their quick start guide suggests keeping follow-up steps to a maximum of three or four. That is a small enough shape to write in one sitting.
How do you create a campaign and add leads?
Click Add New on the Campaigns dashboard, give the campaign a name you will still understand in three months, and continue. The builder then asks for leads, and Instantly's documentation lists several routes in: a CSV upload, their SuperSearch lead database, manual entry, Google Sheets, HubSpot and Pipedrive.
Whichever route you use, the quality of this list decides more about the campaign than the copy does. Instantly's deliverability writing is direct on the point: sending to invalid addresses damages your sender reputation, and their guidance is to use verified contacts and keep hard bounces low. A great sequence sent to a bad list is still a bad campaign.
When you pull leads in from a list rather than a fresh upload, Instantly's documentation describes a duplicate check across all campaigns, so you can stop the same person receiving two different sequences from you at once. It is worth switching on. Nothing kills credibility faster than two of your inboxes pitching the same person in the same week.
How do you build the sequence and use variables?
In the sequence editor you write a subject line and body for each step, add variants of a step for A/B testing, and set the wait time before the next step. Instantly's documentation describes wait times configurable in days, hours or minutes. Independent tutorials commonly settle on three or four business days between steps, which is their author's judgement rather than a product rule.
Personalisation runs on variables mapped from your lead columns. Instantly's quick start guide lists Email, First name, Last name, Job title, Company name, Phone, Website, Location and LinkedIn as predefined variables, and lets you create custom ones using double curly brace syntax around your column name.
Two smaller controls live in the same editor. Links are added by highlighting text and using the link icon in the toolbar. The unsubscribe link is added through the plus button, which offers an Insert Unsubscribe Link option, and there is a separate campaign setting that adds an unsubscribe link to the email headers for one-click opt-out.
Before you go near the launch button, use Preview. Instantly's documentation describes loading real lead data into the preview, sending test emails to several addresses at once by separating them with commas, and viewing a deliverability score for the message. Send the test to an inbox on a different provider than your own so you see what a stranger sees.
Which campaign options actually matter on day one?
There are around twenty settings in Campaign Options and most of them you can leave alone at the start. Six of them decide whether your first campaign behaves sensibly. Here is what Instantly's documentation says each one does.
| Setting | What Instantly's documentation says it does |
|---|---|
| Accounts To Use | Chooses which connected inboxes send this campaign. Supports selecting accounts by tag rather than one by one. |
| Daily Limit | Caps emails per day across every account on the campaign. Their stated recommendation is 30 campaign emails plus 10 warmup emails per account per day, so the campaign limit is your account count multiplied by 30. |
| Stop Sending Emails on Reply | Automatically pauses follow-ups to any lead who replies. The one setting nobody should ever launch without. |
| Time Gap Between Emails | Minimum spacing between sends, documented with a 9 minute default plus a randomised delay defaulting to 5 minutes, so your sending does not look mechanical. |
| Insert Unsubscribe Link Header | Adds an unsubscribe link to the email headers so recipients get a one-click opt-out in their mail client. |
| Delivery Optimization | Strips HTML styling and images, with options for all steps or just the first email. Plain text tends to look more like a real person writing. |
A few more are worth knowing about even if you do not switch them on immediately. Stop Campaign for Company on Reply halts outreach to an entire company domain once anyone there answers, which stops you pitching four people at the same firm after one of them already said no. Stop Sending Emails on Auto-reply pauses when an out-of-office bounces back.
Provider Matching, described in their documentation as sending Gmail to Gmail and Outlook to Outlook, is a deliverability play. It is genuinely useful and it also slows sending down, because the system waits for a matching sender to be free. If your first campaign seems slow, this is one of the first places to look.
How do you set the schedule and launch?
The Schedule tab sets which days and which hours the campaign is allowed to send, and Instantly's quick start guide uses Monday to Friday, nine to five in the lead's timezone as its worked example. Sending inside the recipient's working hours is a small change that makes your mail look like it came from a person with a job.
Launching a first campaign in order
- Confirm the leads are actually in — Open the Leads view and check the count matches what you uploaded. A CSV that failed a column mapping will happily import zero usable rows.
- Check every variable is mapped — Map your spreadsheet columns to the predefined variables, or create custom ones with double curly braces around the column name. Unmapped variables render as blanks.
- Write the sequence and add the unsubscribe route — Three steps is Instantly's recommended shape. Add the unsubscribe link through the plus button in the editor, and switch on the unsubscribe header setting in Campaign Options.
- Preview and send test emails — Load real lead data in Preview, send tests to several addresses separated by commas, and read the deliverability score. Look hardest at the records with missing fields.
- Set the schedule and the daily limit — Pick sending days, hours and timezone. Set the daily limit to your number of sending accounts multiplied by 30, which is the figure Instantly's own documentation recommends.
- Assign the sending accounts, then launch — Select the inboxes or the tag that groups them, confirm Stop Sending Emails on Reply is on, then click Launch. Their troubleshooting guide notes a delay of roughly ten to fifteen minutes before sending begins.
Why is my Instantly campaign not sending?
Almost always one of eight things, and Instantly publishes a troubleshooting guide that lists them. Work down this list in order before you assume anything is broken. Most of the time the campaign is behaving exactly as configured and the configuration is the surprise.
- It is still in draft, or was just launched. Their guide notes a ten to fifteen minute delay after launching or resuming before sending starts.
- You are outside the sending window. Check the Schedule tab covers the current time, that the end date has not passed, and that the timezone and days are the ones you meant.
- A daily limit is already spent. Either the campaign limit or an individual account limit. The Email Accounts dashboard shows an Emails Sent column with today's count against that account's daily campaign limit.
- Campaign Slow Ramp is doing its job. Their documentation describes it raising the daily limit by 2 campaign emails per day until the maximum is reached. It can be disabled, though the gradual climb is the safer default.
- There are no eligible leads right now. Everyone may be waiting out a step delay, or being skipped by the per-company limit, or sitting on a blocklist, or flagged as risky.
- A sending account is in error or paused. Check the Email Accounts dashboard for disconnected, paused or DNS error states, and confirm accounts are actually assigned to this campaign.
- Provider matching is waiting for a match. With ESP matching on, the system holds a send until a same-provider inbox is available.
- The time gap is simply spacing sends out. The documented default is a 9 minute minimum plus a randomised delay of around 5 minutes, so a low-volume campaign genuinely does trickle.
Notice what that list has in common. Every item is a setting talking to another setting, and the campaign is the thing in the middle absorbing the conflicts. That is the honest shape of every sequence builder: you are not describing an outcome, you are configuring a machine and then debugging the machine.
Set-up work like this is exactly what we removed at Sistava. Rather than mapping variables and reconciling two kinds of daily limit, you hire an AI Employee and tell it in plain English who you want to reach and what you want to say. It has its tools connected already, it asks you when it is unsure, and it sets itself up. There is no builder to fight.
FAQ
How do I create a campaign in Instantly?
On the Campaigns dashboard click Add New and name the campaign. Then add leads by CSV, SuperSearch, manual entry, Google Sheets, HubSpot or Pipedrive, write your sequence with subject lines and wait times, map your personalisation variables, preview and send test emails, set the schedule and daily limit, assign your sending accounts, and click Launch.
How many emails should I send per day from an Instantly campaign?
Instantly's documentation recommends 30 campaign emails plus 10 warmup emails per account per day, and gives a formula for the campaign limit: number of sending accounts multiplied by 30. So five inboxes means a campaign limit of 150 a day. Their documentation also notes warmup emails do not count toward either limit.
How many follow-ups should a cold email sequence have?
Instantly's cold email strategy documentation recommends a three-step sequence: an initial email, a short follow-up bump, and a break-up email. Their quick start guide suggests a maximum of three or four follow-up steps. More steps do not reliably mean more replies, and they do mean more chances to annoy someone who has already decided.
How long after launching does an Instantly campaign start sending?
Their troubleshooting guide describes a delay of roughly ten to fifteen minutes after you launch or resume a campaign before sending begins. After that, the documented default time gap of about 9 minutes plus a randomised delay of around 5 minutes spaces individual sends out, so a small campaign takes a while to work through.
Does Instantly stop follow-ups when someone replies?
Yes, if you switch it on. The Stop Sending Emails on Reply setting in Campaign Options pauses follow-ups to any lead who answers. There is also Stop Campaign for Company on Reply, which halts outreach to everyone at that company domain, and Stop Sending Emails on Auto-reply for out-of-office responses.
What is Campaign Slow Ramp in Instantly?
It is a setting that raises your daily campaign sending limit gradually rather than going to full volume on day one. Their documentation describes it increasing by 2 campaign emails per day until the maximum daily limit is reached. It can be disabled to hit the full limit immediately, but the gradual climb is the safer choice on new infrastructure.
Sources
- Instantly Help Center, Quick start guide, all in one
- Instantly Help Center, Campaign options
- Instantly Help Center, Account and campaign limits
- Instantly Help Center, Campaign not sending, complete troubleshooting guide
- Instantly Help Center, Instantly cold email strategy
- Instantly Help Center, SuperSearch
- Instantly blog, Why cold emails land in spam and how to fix it
- Instantly blog, Legal requirements for follow-up emails
- Fahim AI, independent hands-on walkthrough of Instantly